No Fatal Injuries for Swiss Banks under the US Tax Program so far

No Fatal Injuries for Swiss Banks under the US Tax Program so far

The Agefi states a very important in its article analysing the US Tax Program for the Swiss banks: the very existence of the Swiss banks has not been put in danger despite the high fees and the fines paid.

The US administration collected $4.7bn with Category 2 banks paying over $1bn (as of end of 2015), Credit Suisse paying $2.8bn (May 2014), and the $780m from UBS (February 2009). And it is not over yet. For example, Julius Baer has an agreement in principle for $547m but could pay a fine as high as $800m accoding to specialists.

The average penalties so far for Category 2 banks is only 3% of amounts managed despite the potential theoretical up to 50% of the amounts managed announced. It raises the point of how the fines are calculated.

, the average is a little over 3%. This is the second observation: we have no idea how fines are calculated. Deutsche Bank even paid as little as 0.4% of assets managed on behalf of US customers.

Pending completion of the program, we can already draw a conclusion: it is not so much the fines that have shaken the Swiss financial world than the forced transformations demanded by Washington. Since the first breach of banking secrecy in 2009, US authorities have pushed banks into a new era leading to restructuring.